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Ok, I’m done with this place. The butterfly site seems to be growing in popularity with my tech people at the moment. topper.me.uk over there if you like.
10 racks of 1U and 2U servers all named completely randomly: buffy. balrog. mottled. sirocco. rotten. An absolute shitshow to find the damn things at 4am on call.
I wonder if this “bureaucracy mailbox” is open to AWS partners as well as employees because JFC, I have Many Fucking Opinions to share.
Two big updates from Andy Jassy today:
- Taking a buzzsaw to middle management
- Return to Office 5 days a week
$AMZN has been dead money for 4 years. Time to crack some skulls
Attention SaaS builders: on 12 September, I’m hosting an unconference event in London that might be of interest to you. scalefactory.com/events/saas… for more information - drop me a line for a discount code if you’re interested in joining us.
Jon Topper retweeted
You see this, this is what happens in real life. The bots can't show up on the streets.
On the right there (yeah the far right) are the 6 nazis who turned up to cause mayhem.
Everyone else is there to stop them.
This is England.
Useful advice for those of us condemned to attend re:Invent again this year too.
The SaaS CTO Conference: 12 September, London. Join other CTOs and technical decision makers for a one day conference dedicated to the art and craft of building SaaS.
scalefactory.com/events/saas…
And yet Eventbrite still does very well in its category in spite of their page performance being absolute garbage for years.
Surely this is the CTO’s remit.
The rise of the Chief AI Officer is incredibly fascinating to me.
It's this new role where someone is hired to specifically keep up with everything happening in AI and implement it into certain operations within the company.
For example, this person might:
- Find a ChatGPT prompt that makes the Finance team work 10% faster
- Get the Marketing team using Midjourney to work 25% faster
- Implement AI tools to streamline HR processes and save teams hours a day
Every major org is hiring one.
Just recently, NASA, Dell, LVMH, Morgan Stanley, and the Dubai government hired 22.
Why? The potential impact of having someone increase the efficiency of an entire department by 10% is pretty unheard of, but totally possible now.
It also makes sure the org is thinking AI-first into the future and doesn't fall behind.
Everyone talks about AI not just taking jobs, but creating new ones, and this is a perfect example of a role we'll see a whole lot more of.
But that leads me to a couple of unanswered questions (that many orgs likely struggle with too):
- How does an org find someone to do this role?
- Do they need a technical background, or do they just need to know how to deploy new AI tools effectively?
- Are there any education platforms building certifications for CIAOs?
If you recently were hired as a Chief AI Officer or a similar role, I'd LOVE to ask you a few questions.
It can be completely anonymous, and I'll pay for your time. Please send me a DM or email me rowan@therundown(dot)ai























